Read on for the limited attention span gig report ( I am flipping exhausted)
It has been stormcellar weather all week. Ron at the Avalon RSL showed the love to the locals with the courtesy bus - keeps you off the street, safe from being wet and saves a cab fare. Little touches like that put people in a good mood, of which we were the beneficiaries on Friday. Cheers to Jenny, John, Sandy, Linda and a big thank you to Simone who brought 10 mates with her!
The courtesy bus announcements were timed to occur at the end of each set!
A new item crept into the set this weekend at the Avalon, as we finished 'dirty work', Paul struck up a boogie in C and for the rest of the weekend, we wound up with a traditional pointlessly long boogie. Brilliant!
I recorded various people dancing, but as the lights were pointed at the stage, rather than the dance floor, I got mostly black pics of not much. It was a great way to start the weekend of gigs. As we departed for the night and set Sean the GPS Leprechaun for 'Home' we noticed it was raining....
The next gig was at the Wickham Park Hotel in Newcastle.
Midway through the drive, the heavens opened, visibility dropped to a few metres (few yards for our imperial members). I realised doing 100KPH without being able to see anything is a Bad Idea. Even the crazy people tailgating me decided to play it safe. I think Noah was in the overtaking lane.
Still, we made it saefly to the Home Of The Blues in Newcastle, the Wickham Park Hotel.
Did I say home of the blues?
Here's just some of the posters from the acts playing at the Wickham:
And here's an amusing poster I spotted...in secrets mens places....that promises to boldly glow where no man has glowed before...
The Mind Boggles...
Ahem. Moving right along.
The Wickham has a solid blues crowd and the night went off. We settled in midway during the second set and powered away until nigh on mid night. Cheers to Abi for looking after us! Hey Norm!
And just like a tornado, we were off again, the randomly strike somewhere else...in this case, Windsor!
Elsa got some shots along the way the once again seem to indicate that it rains when we play, or we just play a lot when it rains.
The Royal Exchange in Windsor is the local hang out of the Blues. We were fortunate to be joined by friends and the offspring of friends! It turns out we could be the next Wiggles. Parchment Farm was popular (the whole 'old macdonald' tie in)..
Hey to Pete and Kathy, Supermom Jacki (nick, sam, hannah! SMALL CREATURES!!!), Darren, Troy, Wayne and everyone that came down to join us.
By this third show of the weekend, we were either going to be well rehearsed or exhausted. Or all of the above.
We had to start a little slower and lower, with a 3pm kickoff, and gradually nudged it up until it was full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes by the end of the night.
As we're our own roadies, the show isnt over until you've spooled that last cable away (Jackson Browne Anyone?). It gives you a chance to yak to people, whilst you try to manage that overhand underhand cabling trick.
Even Mrose had a 'De-ja- Load' moment. So once more back to the GPS Leprechaun, who was set to 'maximum tolls' and seemed to delight in taking us through as many toll points as possible, home, unload and....BLOG!! ROFL
We have two shows on this coming weekend...as drum magazine wrote last week - 'relentless gigging'. Relentless. Heh. I like that.
Until next time.
MJEB